


Suspended Animation

by cruisedirector



Category: Star Trek: Voyager
Genre: Ambiguous/Open Ending, Apologies, Artificial Womb, Birth Control, Developing Relationship, Discussion of Abortion, Dubious Consent Due To Identity Issues, Episode: s02e11 Maneuvers, Episode: s02e25 Resolutions, Episode: s03e17 Unity, Episode: s04e18-19 The Killing Game, Episode: s04e21 The Omega Directive, Episode: s04e22 Unforgettable, Episode: s04e23 Demons, Episode: s05e11 Hero Worship, F/M, False Memories, Gender Roles, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Love Confessions, Maquis, Mind Control, Nausea, Pregnancy, Tears, This Is Why We Can't Have Nice Things, Unplanned Pregnancy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 1998-01-30
Updated: 1998-01-30
Packaged: 2017-10-06 20:31:38
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,758
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/57479
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cruisedirector/pseuds/cruisedirector
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Usually I refuse to read any piece of fan fiction that puts Janeway in the situation in which I get her here. I resisted writing this from the moment the idea came to me, around the time I finished <a href="http://archiveofourown.org/works/34809">"Captain Miller's Tale"</a>, which is a necessary prequel. This is a cynical piece about power and gender, centered the dichotomy forced upon Janeway in which she can be a captain or a woman but never both, and exploited during the fourth season with the producers' ongoing message that women are supposed to be huge-breasted boy toys whereas captains are supposed to be sexless automatons.</p><p>I wanted to do a lot of things with this story when it started in 1998: speculate on 24th century reproductive technology, bring Janeway and Chakotay's absurd on-again off-again relationship to a point of no reversion, and put Janeway in a position that a male captain absolutely, positively would never have to face because badly as she behaves in this story, I think Picard would have done worse. I expect people to disagree strongly with my take on any or all of the above.</p><p>The story is set between "The Killing Game" and "One" and contains spoilers through the end of the fourth season. People who don't like to read about nonconsensual (non-violent) sexual situations, unwanted pregnancy, or the politics of abortion will probably not like it. I have several readers to thank for assistance, particularly Maquismom, Siubhan, and Windsweptaway for commentary, and Claire for two-year-old conversations which shaped all of this.</p>
    </blockquote>





	Suspended Animation

**Author's Note:**

> Usually I refuse to read any piece of fan fiction that puts Janeway in the situation in which I get her here. I resisted writing this from the moment the idea came to me, around the time I finished ["Captain Miller's Tale"](http://archiveofourown.org/works/34809), which is a necessary prequel. This is a cynical piece about power and gender, centered the dichotomy forced upon Janeway in which she can be a captain or a woman but never both, and exploited during the fourth season with the producers' ongoing message that women are supposed to be huge-breasted boy toys whereas captains are supposed to be sexless automatons.
> 
> I wanted to do a lot of things with this story when it started in 1998: speculate on 24th century reproductive technology, bring Janeway and Chakotay's absurd on-again off-again relationship to a point of no reversion, and put Janeway in a position that a male captain absolutely, positively would never have to face because badly as she behaves in this story, I think Picard would have done worse. I expect people to disagree strongly with my take on any or all of the above.
> 
> The story is set between "The Killing Game" and "One" and contains spoilers through the end of the fourth season. People who don't like to read about nonconsensual (non-violent) sexual situations, unwanted pregnancy, or the politics of abortion will probably not like it. I have several readers to thank for assistance, particularly Maquismom, Siubhan, and Windsweptaway for commentary, and Claire for two-year-old conversations which shaped all of this.

She woke feeling nauseous, as she had each morning since she found the note. She'd written it to herself on a stardate she didn't remember as memorable, and her official and personal logs contradicted it, so she wanted to believe it was a dream--though if it had been a dream, why hadn't she simply recorded it? The note was searing, nothing like anything she could ever remember writing before--though the beginning certainly sounded like her, sitting in Da Vinci's studio using real paper the way she had after the encounter with Species 8472. It was her handwriting. She'd had the computer analyze it. She'd been tempted to have the computer analyze the content and tell her whether she could have been hallucinating or under mind control, but she couldn't bear to put the contents of the document into the system where someone else might find it even if she encrypted it. Right now, at least, she was the only one who knew about her first officer's affair with the Ramoran tracer Kellin.

Well, not the only one. She'd given him some paper, too, so that he'd remember--she'd reported that dutifully in her own note. She still wasn't sure why she'd done it. Had she meant it as a gift, or as something she wanted him to torture himself with? At least neither of them could remember what Kellin had looked like. It was possible that Chakotay was sitting in his quarters reading to himself, and weeping, or getting excited at the thought of the alien woman...

Kathryn Janeway leaped out of bed and ran for the bathroom, barely getting there in time before nausea overtook her. This was the fourth morning she'd gotten sick this week. Time to stop postponing the inevitable and go see the Doctor: with any luck, he'd tell her that she'd caught some alien virus, and her vomiting had nothing to do with that unforgettable letter to herself. If he found nothing wrong with her, she might have to confront her mental condition...but maybe a simple prescription would make her feel better, and then she wouldn't keep obsessing about the other woman.

Or maybe she was just obsessing about Kellin to stop from thinking about her own behavior. She shut her eyes against the ache from the onslaught of memories: Chakotay, crawling beside her in a Jeffries tube, calling her Catrine. Chakotay, helping her down from a cliff where she'd gone to speak to Klingons who'd once been her crew. Chakotay, pushing her hair back from her eyes as he leaned in to kiss her...

Catching a glimpse of herself in the mirror over the commode, she blanched. Awful. She seemed to have aged five years during the past couple of months. Her face was pale and pasty, her eyes puffy, and the short hair only emphasized the drag to her jowls. She'd cut it off because she thought it would be more efficient, but now she felt like she had become her haircut. Captain Janeway, twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. Except for that one night...and the night she'd written herself this note, which was probably a direct result of that other one night. Otherwise, it wouldn't have mattered so much if Chakotay fell in love with someone else...

She leaned over the toilet and threw up again. It was her own damn fault.

* * * *

"I haven't been feeling very well. Neelix's food seems to be upsetting my stomach more than usual."

"You don't look well. You seem to have lost weight, Captain. I wish you'd come to me at the first sign of trouble."

"Well, I thought it was nothing...stress about the Omega particle, things like that. This is the first week I've actually gotten sick."

The Doctor gave her an appraising look as he indicated that he wanted her to lie down. "Well, let's do some preliminary scans and hope that you haven't made things worse by ignoring your body." He ran a medical tricorder over her, stared at it for a moment, frowned, then went to get another tricorder.

"Something wrong?"

"This tricorder seems to be malfunctioning." He performed the scan again, then left her lying there and hurried to his console. "Oh, no."

"What is it?"

"Apparently the Hirogen did not maintain the crew's contraceptive boosters. I didn't think to check because it didn't seem relevant at the time." The Doctor sounded a little frightened. Did he expect to be disciplined for not being able to stay on top of everything when he was trying just to keep them alive? She smiled, impressed at his efficiency as she raised up on her elbows.

"Are my hormones out of whack, then? I was afraid I'd caught a disease..."

"You don't understand." The EMH looked directly at her with something akin to panic on his face. "Captain, you're pregnant."

"I'm WHAT?" She sat up, too suddenly. The room swam and blurred as her pulse began to pound in her throat. She knew she should lie down...then she knew it was too late, she was going to be sick again. "I'm..." She ran for the nearest supply closet, hand over her mouth. Fortunately there was a sterile pan. But she made a mess all over the floor anyway since her shaking hands couldn't hold it still.

"Go lie back down immediately, Captain." The Doctor was behind her before she'd stopped gagging, taking the pan from her fingers and steering her toward the biobed. "I'm going to give you an injection for the nausea, and a vitamin booster. Put this on your forehead." He slapped a cold cloth into her hand. The taste of bile was strong in her mouth. She obeyed because she couldn't spare the energy to argue.

Pregnant. Her head swam. She must have been an idiot not to suspect, or in willful denial, but then unplanned pregnancies were almost unheard of among those using approved fertility suppressants. Most "accidental" pregnancies were not accidental at all, but the result of negligence or sabotage. There were still no easy solutions, she thought, refusing to think about the issue as anything other than an abstract dilemma, because she knew that if she reacted to her real feelings she would try to tear the growth from her body with her bare hands. The thing didn't have independent rights yet, after all. Since the development of the artificial womb, most Federation worlds had agreed on fetal rights but also on genetic parents' freedom from responsibility if they so chose. Though technically illegal, abortion was still practiced on worlds with limited resources while governments feigned ignorance. On Earth, the most common response to unwanted pregnancy was to put the fetus in stasis, pending either surrogate gestation and adoption or later re-implantation in the genetic mother.

"How do you feel?" the Doctor asked gently from across the room where he was cleaning up.

"Fine," the captain snapped automatically, struggling to stay focused. Scientific options...she had several, though not nearly the range of choices that would have been available to her in the Alpha Quadrant. There might be a crewmember on board who wanted to raise a child, but that was out of the question in this case. She could have the fetus put into stasis until they got back to the Alpha Quadrant...of course, by then she might be too old to bear a child, but there would be artificial wombs and surrogate parents. And if she didn't make it back with the ship, surely the child could be adopted through official channels. It was more complicated out here without the official paperwork to surrender genetic material, but Tuvok could probably ratify the legal documentation...unless someone else made a biological claim...

"Captain, the initial scans indicate that the fetus is human, not Hirogen. You realize that legally I am bound to determine who the father is. Of course, since you were impregnated as the result of violation by the Hirogen, the decision whether to notify him will be yours..."

The legal rights of rape victims were very clear. Genetic fathers had no recourse to track down any resulting offspring, and they could be prosecuted for trying. The laws extended to protect men who had genetic material taken from them by force; that was why the captain had felt no qualms about plotting to take Seska's baby from her. Had its conception occurred as Seska had claimed, the Cardassian would have had no right to raise the child under Federation law. Seska had in essence raped Chakotay when she became pregnant by siezing his genetic material, it was a felony to coerce gametes from someone else. Even if there was no sexual assault, the unlawful gain of genetic material was considered a crime. In such rare cases, the fathers could not only claim paternity but could press charges against women who had taken advantage of them...

Captain Janeway burst into tears.

* * * *

She didn't tell the Doctor the truth. She allowed him to believe that she and Chakotay had come together before her holographic implant was turned off. If the Doctor suspected that she was lying to him, he was too ashamed of his own failure to check the status of her fertility to call her on it. At least, he wasn't going to tell Chakotay.

Almost ten weeks. She'd missed her cycle twice without even noticing--stress had made it irregular since they'd been in the Delta Quadrant despite the regulating fertility suppression shots. She stared numbly at the ghostly creature on the medical monitor--a boy, the Doctor informed her with false cheerfulness when he did the DNA scan. Whatever the Hirogen might have done to her, even if legally she could claim violation, she did not know whether she could bring herself to terminate its life.

Chakotay's son. No mistake this time. This was his child...and hers.

"There's no rush to make a decision, of course," the Doctor said after he'd informed her that pregnancy hormones were making her more prone to emotional displays, for which he could compensate by boosting her neurotransmitter levels. "Of course, if you elect to transplant the fetus to a living host, there will be less chance of rejection if the procedure is performed as early in the pregnancy as possible. If you choose an artificial womb, we're going to have to make a few changes in the laboratory structure to adapt. Our stasis facilities are fully functional."

"Yes," she replied automatically.

"Captain, I realize that the prospect of having the child on the ship may be deeply upsetting to you...why don't we have a ship's counselor when we need one? Normally I refer crewmembers to Commander Chakotay, but in this case..."

"Doctor."

"I'm sorry. I'm at a bit of a loss. I blame myself..."

"Blame the Hirogen." She wished she could say that she did, but she knew perfectly well who was responsible for her condition. Whatever else the Hirogen had done to them--torturing the crew, forcing Torres to experience a holographic pregnancy--they hadn't taken sexual advantage of any of her crewmembers. She was the only one who had done that.

"Doctor, I don't think I need to tell you that this information is not to be shared with anyone, no matter what. Under any circumstances..."

"Captain! I would not violate doctor-patient confidentiality. It would go against my programming."

"Good."

"The pregnancy appears to be progressing well and the fetus is genetically healthy, but Captain, there is still a risk of miscarriage. I must advise you to avoid strenuous physical activity and high stress..."

"Understood, Doctor. I'm taking the rest of the morning off. I'll be on the holodeck." She weighed letting him inform the bridge crew that she was unwell, decided against it. "Janeway to Tuvok."

"Tuvok here."

"I'm going to get some work done down here. I still want that security report by thirteen hundred hours. Tell Chakotay he still has the bridge." It was a breach of etiquette not to have contacted her first officer directly, but not serious enough to cause consternation.

Once she reached the holodeck, she activated the Da Vinci program to do what she did so often: went to talk to him, then rejected every suggestion he made because she was sure her own ideas were better.

* * * *

"But a child is a wonderful gift from God, Katarina."

Leonardo wasn't understanding her. She'd tried to explain what she'd done, but the maestro had smiled condescendingly at her suggestion that she'd violated Chakotay against his will, and given her a Catholic speech on the sanctity of the love between a man and a woman and the life in her womb. The old man also tried to soothe what he assumed were her fears about the stigma of illegitimacy and of dying in childbirth. He showed her sketches of gynecological equipment he had designed...at the sight of which she got sick again. Truth be told, Da Vinci was a distraction from thinking about the implications of what she'd done--which she couldn't deal with, not now.

Fosterage by a member of the crew was impossible. There were no secrets on a ship this small, everyone would know who the parents were, and in time the child would find out that the mother who didn't want him was also his captain. There weren't any outside sources of adoptive parents. Which effectively narrowed her choices to two: she could continue to carry the fetus, or put it in stasis indefinitely with the understanding that she would bear it later or have it gestated artificially within a preordained time limit.

Or she could terminate it. But that wasn't an option she could even consider without bursting into tears or throwing up. She wasn't going to kill something that was part of Chakotay.

"Katarina, has he refused to marry you?"

Da Vinci's words jolted her out of her reverie. "He doesn't know I'm pregnant, remember?"

"Then why do you not tell him you bear his child? You have told me before of this Chakotay. He seems an honorable man. If you go to him and explain that he took you in his sleep, surely he will do what is right."

"He will insist that I should have...woken him, and tell me I have betrayed his trust."

"Nonsense. He will be flattered that a woman such as yourself would desire him. He will beg you to make your affections known...to become his wife, as is fitting and natural."

"He's not going to want me after what I did. He doesn't want me now. There was another woman..." she couldn't bear to think what might have happened between Chakotay and Kellin had the woman stayed on Voyager, or even what might have happened if he continued to remember her.

"Perhaps he felt that you had rejected him and sought consolation in another, but if you go to him, Katarina, and tell him you love him..."

"I can't do that."

"Why not?"

"I'm his commanding...I'm the leader of his people. I can't have his child and remain his leader."

"You are a woman. Women have children. Are you telling me that a woman cannot be the leader of her people? The Duke would agree with you, Katarina, but I am very surprised to hear you say it..."

"That's not what I said." His words hit hard. "I just don't think that leaders can have relationships like this one in a situation like mine."

"The Duke has had children with several mistresses as well as his wife, yet he is widely respected and loved. Why should it be different for you?"

It wasn't a question she had fully resolved in her own mind. Dimly she remembered an earlier discussion with Chakotay about the probability of the crew pairing off, and her own insistence that as captain that was a luxury she didn't have. She'd been using Mark as her excuse at that time, but obviously the situation had changed. Damn Mark anyway--without that letter from him telling her he was married, she would never have done what she did with Chakotay. There were Starfleet captains who were married to other officers, sometimes even people in their own chain of command; Starfleet frowned upon it, but she'd had friends in such situations. The first officer of the Vico, for instance, who had been married to a scientist when the ship was destroyed, their son the only survivor. Case in point for why Starfleet frowned upon such marriages. Nonetheless, she knew Starfleet captains who had married and raised families--Owen Paris, for one, and her father for another, though both of them had married civilians.

Why should it be different for her? For one, Chakotay was her first officer, not just any crewmember who served on her ship. The danger of disagreements spilling over into their professional lives was much greater than if he were an ensign. The fraternization issues were mitigated because of the closeness in rank, but that was outweighed by the fact that he was in her direct chain of command and reported to her directly. It might be possible to alter the structure somewhat--to shift more responsibility onto Tuvok in that regard--but not without compromising his position and hers.

It was impossible.

He had told her about Kellin. She'd written that, in her note to herself: he'd come to her and explained that he wouldn't let the other woman come between them if it was going to hurt her. According to her own record, she'd told him he was her best friend, she cared about him greatly, and she wished him happiness. Privately, she had wanted to beg him to tell her it wasn't too late, reach out her hand to him and sieze hold of something she couldn't ever have...

Whatever else, she couldn't go on practicing avoidance. She had to think of the ship.

"Computer, end Da Vinci simulation. Janeway to Chakotay."

"Chakotay here, Captain."

"I need to talk to you."

"I'm just minding the store." She did not smile.

"Could you meet me on the holodeck?"

"Right away." After he severed communications, she waited, trying not to let herself think. One step at a time. Step one: tell him.

* * * *

Her heart was hammering, and the nausea had returned despite the injection the Doctor had given her. When Chakotay came in and smiled at her, it all hit her at once. What she'd done to him. What she'd done to her own position on the ship. What she'd done to their chances.

She threw up in one of the maestro's magnificent urns. Chakotay wanted to take her to sickbay immediately, but she told him she'd already been there and begged him to stop worrying about her. His concern only made everything worse. She wished she had some reason to pick a fight with him--some way she could bring up Kellin and scream at him about that, some criticism of his work performance, their command relationship, anything. She'd brought their mission down--of course there was no way he would continue to serve under her after what she'd done, she should have seen that at once. If the positions had been reversed, she would have had him thrown off the ship. If he decided to press charges against her, he might be able to do the same to her now. It was all over, for her, for them, for Voyager.

Maybe she could throw herself on his mercy.

"I have to tell you something. Something unforgivable," she whispered, staring into the urn.

"Unforgivable how?"

"Something I did to you, and by extension to the ship. But mostly to you."

He sat stiffly on the floor beside her, crossing his legs in the position he used for meditation. He took a moment to compose himself, steepling his hands, then he deliberately relaxed, arms loose at his sides. "I'm listening."

She leaned over and retched again. By the time she was able to stop, she was shaking, and crying, and had had to shake his arms off her several times.

"Kathryn, what is it? You're scaring me." She couldn't answer. "How bad can it be? Worse than using me as a stooge for a spy plot with Tom Paris and the Kazon?" She nodded. "Well, it couldn't be worse than what Seska did." Her hands knotted into tense fists. "Why don't you just tell me and get it over with?"

"I'm pregnant."

He sat very still, more than she'd ever seen. Only his exaggerated breathing gave away the depth of his reaction. "I assume you wouldn't be telling me this if you didn't intend to bear the child," he said finally.

"I haven't made any decisions. I need...I need your help." Her voice was a choked whisper which she could barely hear herself.

Chakotay rose and paced, lifting up sketches Leonardo had left on the table, fiddling with the master's tools. "I served on the El-Baz under Johari Williams. She stayed in command through three pregnancies," he informed her as he moved. "I realize it's going to be more complicated out here, but we'll get you through this, Kathryn."

"I didn't call you here for a pep talk...that's not the...that's not all there is to it, Chakotay."

His footsteps went towards the back of the room, towards the high-backed chairs; when she heard him sit down heavily, she turned to look at him. His expression was even and guarded, cheeks a little hollowed as he pressed his lips together, but he appeared neither angry nor devastated. She didn't know whether that was a good sign or a bad one. She needed him thinking clearly, not torn apart by emotion as she was, but what she had to say to him next might send him into an unmitigable rage, and it might have been easier if they'd had the fight about the pregnancy before he discovered what she'd done to him. She would only get what she deserved, but the ship...

"Who was he?" Chakotay asked quietly, in a voice which betrayed nothing. She tried to say the pronoun, but the word kept sticking in her mouth, so that only a harsh pant came out each time. After three tries, tears were running down her face again, and he looked close to cracking. "Anyone I know? This is the part I'm supposed to find unforgivable, right?" His voice had started to rise but he wrestled it down again. "I guess I had it coming, though it still feels like a kick in the balls, Kathryn. I just hope he means something to you."

"Like Riley Frasier?"

"I didn't know you cared that much." The careful artifice of his steady gaze cracked. "It wasn't...just a fling?"

"No."

"Ohh. Well, I lied. I was hoping he meant nothing to you and you weren't crying over him." She was only making it worse, she realized as his face crumpled and he put a hand over his eyes. "God, Kathryn." He hunched over, as though she really had kicked him in the balls.

"I'm sorry. I'm sorry I did this to you..."

"You did it to you, not me." Abruptly he straightened, pushing the pain off his face as he dragged his hand downward. "All right, it happened. You obviously didn't plan on getting pregnant. There's no point in wishing it was me..."

"It was you."

He heard her, although she started speaking over him: there was no doubt from the way he jolted upright in the chair that he knew what she'd said. Nonetheless, he demanded, "What?"

"It was you. You've been the only one, since we've been out here. Yes I was jealous of Riley, but she's not here, and I didn't want you to start to hate me because I couldn't be that for you." She wrapped her arms around her body defensively. "But I didn't want anyone else to have you either, I know it's not fair..."

He looked muddled, almost doubtful...a clear-eyed contrast to her own tearful face. "I don't understand, Kathryn. Even if you were pretending it was me..."

"I wasn't pretending."

"You're saying...you did what Seska did? Stole my DNA and impregnated yourself?" His voice was beyond incredulous.

"It's worse than that. It was you, you just didn't know. When the Hirogen put those implants into us, when we were in old France, you remember, we were working together..."

"You mean we..." His eyes widened in shock. Then his whole face began to melt. "Kathryn, you can't be held responsible for anything you did under their influence, and neither can I. It wasn't us..."

"It wasn't you," she corrected. "I didn't meet Captain Miller until my implant was already turned off, remember?"

Chakotay took a moment to digest this. "Are you saying that you made love with me when I didn't know who I was, even though you did?"

"That's exactly what I'm saying." He stood staring at her, wearing an expression she'd never seen before and she didn't know how to read. "The Hirogen sabotaged our fertility suppression boosters. The Doctor thinks that counts as sexual violation of an unwilling party. He won't tell anyone anything about this unless I authorize him to." Long silence for a moment. Then Chakotay blew his breath out between pursed lips, making her jump at the unexpected noise. "I thought...I owed it to you to tell you, after what I did."

He stared at her stonily. "I want to know exactly what happened. The part you obviously left out of your report."

"All right." She wiped her hands on her face, wondering whether to stick to the most superficial details or to risk tell him what she'd been feeling. "We were...you know how we met, in the club. You insisted on following me into the Jeffries tubes. We flirted a little. You told me I wasn't like the girls you knew back home."

"He told you."

"He told me, yes. He didn't trust Mademoiselle de Neuf...no, wait, she was already Seven again. I don't think yo...he trusted me either, especially not after we went into the Klingon program. He thought they were some kind of mutant experiments I wasn't telling him about. I could tell he didn't like knowing that I was hiding things from him, but he put up with it. He drank some of the blood wine even though I told him not to, and after I talked to the Doctor, he demanded to know what our plans were. I don't remember what I said to evade you, but you tried to get me to open up, and then you touched me...you started to massage my shoulders..."

She started to correct the pronoun for his sake, but Chakotay was no longer looking at her: his eyes were closed, nostrils flared as he stared at something behind his lids. Was he remembering that night on New Earth, the one she'd been remembering when Captain Miller touched her? She'd never even learned his first name. Not that it mattered--he wasn't a real person. And she knew it wasn't Captain Miller she'd been making love to, even if Chakotay didn't.

"I called him your name," she whispered. "You...he made me look at him, like he wanted to make sure I knew where I was. Then he kissed me. I could have stopped him before he did it, but I didn't. I'm sorry, Chakotay, I thought about how ironic it was that they'd made me a leader in the original Maquis, and you were the captain, I wondered whether this would have been in the script anyway. It's something that might have happened in a holonovel. I hadn't slept in more than a day, and you...you apologized, you said you didn't intend to try anything, but it happened so fast..."

"Right there with the Klingons listening?"

"Yes."

"I don't believe you. That couldn't have been you. The Kathryn Janeway I know would never have sex while there were Klingons listening."

His smile broke her heart. "Oh, Chakotay."

"Tell me why." His voice cracked.

"I wanted you," she answered in a small voice.

"You wanted me. In a trench with Klingons listening."

"I know you must feel terribly taken advantage of..."

"Don't tell me what I feel," he interrupted her. "I don't understand. This is something I can't figure out about you--" he swept his arm around the room. "Your preference for holograms. That's all I was, a character in a holonovel. Even if it was my body. What did it mean, if you knew I wouldn't remember?" She walked to the far side of the room, pressing her face into the corner to hide the burning shame from him and from herself. "I remember when the implants deactivated," he said quietly from where he stayed behind her. "I was right outside of sickbay wondering how in hell I got there. I started looking around because I knew you had to be nearby...I could sense you everywhere. I could smell you. And when I finally caught up with you, I knew there was something you weren't telling me. I thought maybe you'd made a deal with the Hirogen you knew I wouldn't like. I'm getting used to that--you not telling me until it's too late when you've made a command decision you don't expect me to approve of."

"Please, don't start..."

"Never mind, that's a different argument. Or maybe it's part of the same argument--why you don't trust me. Why you'd make love with an artificial me, or a me who can't remember, but never with me who's been right here all along. I just don't understand." She heard him lift and then drop heavily a piece of metal. "Kathryn, I need to think. I can't deal with all this at once. Can I ask a favor?"

"What?"

"Don't make any decisions yet. Please. Give me time."

"I can't risk..."

"A day. Give me a day. Let me talk to my spirit guide. You told me to take the time when Seska..."

"All right."

"I need to think this through. Even if you don't care what I'd want."

"Of course I care. Why do you think I told you?"

"I don't know."

"Chakotay...would it make any difference if I said...if I said I did it...because I loved you?"

"Of course it would." He stared at her, his shoulders shaking. "I loved you too, Kathryn," he whispered. Then he left.

* * * *

Tuvok hailed her on her way back to her quarters to tell her that the ship was experiencing a disastrous deuterium shortage. She had to stop to throw up before she could go to the bridge. That should have made the decision for her--there was barely enough power to keep the ship going, let alone to keep a stasis field operating indefinitely. And the crew absolutely couldn't afford a captain working at less than total efficiency. She remembered her fear a few weeks earlier, when she'd forced Seven to destroy the Omega particles as they were in the midst of stabilizing--that was unlike her, that sort of blind terror and clinging to regulations. She wondered whether her hormones had been affecting her--though it wasn't fair to blame hormones, pregnant women had had to struggle for years to retain their commands by proving via exhaustive medical research that the physiological changes did not affect performance. It was more likely that her own sense of guilt, the repercussions from the last time she took a risk--that interlude with Chakotay--was interfering with her decisionmaking.

Tuvok's suggestions included asking the crew to share quarters until an energy source could be found. If she had to give up her quarters, there was no chance she could keep her condition a secret from anyone...not just the senior staff, but the whole crew would know within a matter of days. How could she ask this crew to support a child of hers when she couldn't even get the ship to the next system? She would have to tell Chakotay, and he would have to agree: a baby was out of the question.

Surely the hormones were responsible the fact that she couldn't stop crying.

Seven once again found a possible solution, and as always it was risky, something none of the rest of them would have considered: a Demon-class planet, with deadly radiation emanating from the surface. She felt bullied, even Harry who insisted on going on the away mission, but if her own senior staff was practically calling her a coward for wanting to turn the ship around, then she had no choice but to take the risks her officers volunteered for. The decision to land Voyager was entirely irrational: she absolutely refused to let Chakotay take another shuttle, and knew there was no chance the Doctor would permit her on the surface in her condition even in an environmental suit. If she'd had time to take care of the problem then, she might have made the obvious choice, but she ended up on the bridge for thirty straight hours, without even having a moment to talk to Chakotay alone.

When she learned what the silver deuterium alien wanted of them, she agreed to something she had always considered abhorrent almost instantly. In retrospect, she was shocked at how easily she agreed to be cloned, and to ask her crew to do the same. Tuvok refused outright and expressed some surprise at the bargain: he cited Commander William Riker's destruction of a clone colony which had taken DNA from several Enterprise crewmembers, and warned her against trying to coerce her own crewmembers to such a violation. She thought about what life would be like for herself on the planet, without Tuvok. Could she consign herself to such a fate?

Could she terminate her own child?

Tuvok didn't know a damn thing about no-win scenarios.

"The process seems to clone each cell," the Doctor informed the captain and first officer.

"Will the fetus clone, too?"

"Yes."

"That makes it a lot easier for me to decide to let a part of me stay here," Chakotay murmured when they were alone. He had brought something with him for her to read: his log about Kellin, written in his almost incomprehensible scrawl. The tone of the letter didn't sound much like Chakotay. It was riddled with cliches rather than ancient legends--he didn't sound like a man in love so much as a man who desperately wanted to believe he had found love. He knew the alien woman would forget him, just as she had known Captain Miller would forget her. They had that in common. Oddly, the letter comforted her.

She wondered whether he would leave the ship for good if she refused to have the baby. Could she stay in command, if he did that? Would knowing that his clone had her on the demon planet be any consolation? He'd probably offer to resign as first officer and take care of the baby. He might beg her to raise a child with him because he thought it was a way of binding her to him...and he might never forgive her if she said no.

She had moments of wanting the baby, fiercely, for itself and for him, and moments of hating it just as intensely, because that passion alone was almost enough to make her decide to have the child and to hell with the consequences. She could never deliberately have allowed this to happen, but it had, in spite of her best intentions. The last time Chakotay had been faced with a child he hadn't planned on conceiving, he had welcomed it. She had no doubt that no matter how he felt about her, he would not hold it against this child...he would cherish and love the baby in spite of her if necessary.

"I can't end this pregnancy," she told him in a cracking voice, eyes still on his handwriting on the replicated parchment, as he lifted his head from behind the Doctor's screen to look at her.

"I was going to beg you not to," he admitted. "But Kathryn...I don't want you to think I'm choosing the baby over you. I want you. I know you think it's outrageously selfish of me, but I want you both."

"Then you can forgive me for..."

"Of course I can, it's not the way I would have planned it but this is what I always wanted..."

"Chakotay, I want it too. Tell me how it can work."

"We'll make it work." His hands were on her belly, he had tears running down his face and kept kissing her cheeks over and over. "I'll do anything, Kathryn, there are so many people on this crew who would do anything for you, they'll help. They're the same people who followed your orders to get my son back from the Cardassians, despite the risks."

"But I'm the captain. I'm supposed to put the crew first, always, it's why they followed that order. You think they would feel the same way about our son?"

"I know they...it's a boy?"

"It's a boy."

The statement seemed to knock him out. They were talking about a baby, not an insurmountable obstacle.

* * * *

By the time they encountered the nebula which she refused to sacrifice a year going around, Kathryn Janeway was definitely feeling time pressure. They would have to tell the crew. Soon.

* * * *

  
_Okay, kids. This is now a Choose Your Own Adventure story. _

_What I assume happened next was that they encountered the nebula from the episode "One," and the Doc told Janeway that for whatever technobabble reason, the fetus could not go into stasis inside the mother--it would continue to develop if not put in separate stasis, etc. So the fetus has to be removed at least temporarily. Janeway would then Chakotay they'd have to wait, maybe indefinitely. He'd have no choice but to accept this (unless we want to go completely a/u, pretend the ship did not go through the nebula, spent a year going around, settled on some nice planet where everyone could raise babies like a _Space: 1999_ Operation Exodus story, etc.) _

_Then there are a few other options. We could assume that they still have not told the crew, in which case Seven would not have known there was a fetus in stasis in sickbay when she turned off most of the ship's power to try to get through the nebula. In which case, the fetus doesn't make it, just like all those convenient miscarriages on nighttime soaps, and Janeway and Chakotay can get back to their lives--with or without an agreement to try again someday, depending on how treacly and awful we want to get. Or we could assume the fetus does make it, and Janeway and Chakotay take that as a sign that they're supposed to raise this child, get married, live happily ever after, etc. OR we could assume the fetus does make it but they decide it's best to leave it in suspended animation indefinitely anyway--the risk to her and to the ship is too great, etc. Then they can either break up because Chakotay wants to go have babies with some nice girl who's not distracted by a starship, or they can stay together with a similar agreement to raise the child when they have time. (If someone really wants, you can choose an adventure where the Doc tries implanting the fetus in Chakotay's ass, but I'm not going to go there.) _

_See, I don't like _any_ of these endings. I don't like anything about this whole situation. I think that if Janeway and/or Chakotay want children, they are just plain going to have to make a choice to have them with someone else, because the starship Voyager simply cannot afford to have its two senior officers in sickbay in hysterics during a crisis. Janeway and Neelix, yes. Chakotay and Seven, yes. I know--blaargh, but in terms of what's plausible and responsible, I actually would prefer either of those scenarios to Janeway and Chakotay electing to place their own biological progeny over the people on the crew they have sworn to protect. And that is why I can't stand J/C baby stories. Now go write your own, and have fun!_


End file.
